How to Protect Yourself from Phishing Attacks in Chrome and Firefox
Phishing is a form of social engineering where attackers try to get you to reveal your sensitive information through malicious links, SMS, QR codes, and more. Here’s how to protect yourself.
Have you ever been sent a link that doesn’t look quite right, but you click on it anyway, only to discover it was malicious? If you did click on that link, you might find yourself on a site that looks legit enough to persuade you to enter sensitive information (such as logins, credit card numbers, and more). If you fall for the trick, you could wind up dealing with a nightmare of epic proportions.
One way to avoid this problem is to enable anti-phishing features in your browser.
You might be thinking, “Why not use an anti-phishing extension?” That’s a good question. The answer is simple.
Not every extension can be trusted. More malicious browser extensions are discovered regularly, so don’t install extensions without vetting them. But even if you’ve spent the time vetting an extension, there’s no telling if it could be later compromised or if it will wind up blocking legitimate sites and not blocking malicious ones.
With that in mind, your best bet is to use your browser’s built-in anti-phishing features so you won’t be caught unaware.
Now that you’ve been reminded of the possible danger of installing third-party software, let’s focus on Chrome and Firefox.
How to enable anti-phishing in Chrome
What you’ll need: The only thing you’ll need for this is an updated Chrome browser. I’ll demonstrate this feature on the desktop version of the browser, but the process is similar on the mobile version of the app.
- Open Chrome Settings
Open your Chrome browser and then open Settings by clicking the three-dot menu in the upper right-hand corner. From the drop-down menu, click Settings. - Go to “Privacy and security”
From the left sidebar, click “Privacy and security” and then click Security in the right pane. - Enable “Enhanced protection”
In the Security section, you’ll find three options under Safe Browsing: “Enhanced protection”, “Standard protection”, and “No protection”, You want to make sure to enable “Enhanced protection”. - Enable “Secure connections”
To bolster the Enhanced protection option, scroll down under “Secure connections” and click the On/Off slider for “Always use secure connections” until it’s in the On position.
Once you’ve done this step, you can close Settings and trust that Chrome is better capable of protecting you against phishing attacks.
Click here for the full article with examples and FireFox instructions.
Courtesy of Jack Wallen, zdnet.com